At the Next Table

by Leanne Davis

  I don’t. She simply sits at my table. That’s it. In her defense, she doesn’t know anything about me. Why it’s my table. Why I sit there.

  And it took a few times, but I realized it was a bit of a relief to be around someone who didn’t know about me. Who didn’t know Harper or what happened. And hell, Alicia was entertaining and easy to warm up to despite my best efforts. Even if I wanted to ice her out, annoy her into leaving me and my table alone, it was hard not to respond to her. No doubt, it’s a learned and manipulative charm of hers to help her do her lawyer-things, whatever they are. It’s obvious she’s not from around Love. No one I know, even Harper’s upper middle-class mother dresses like Alicia Anderson.

  As if I know fashion—yeah, right—but her style seems like something I’d see on TV shows, not around town. There’s nothing about her that speaks of this area. Seattle? I guess. I know nothing of it, either. It’s far across the country and has a needle-like building there in the skyline. That’s all I know of Seattle and her. Maybe that’s why she’s okay, being at the table each morning. She’s so far from anything or anyone I know. Being with her feels almost as odd as sitting at the table alone without Harper.

  Harper—quiet, sweet, wholesome Harper—was petite in every way. There was a softness to her I loved. A shy warmth in how she interacted with me and everyone around her. I can’t imagine lawyer-Alicia making anyone feel warm and fuzzy. Even if lawyer-Alicia is silly and funny. And she does have knack of making me forget things—my life’s grief, even—for a few moments. Things I never dreamed could be forgotten. So it killed twenty minutes of my day. Before Alicia forced herself on me and sat at my table, I avoided lingering at this damn reminder of Harper and me—Lover’s Landing. But some days, because of Alicia, I do now linger past seven fifty. The time passing beyond my initial ten minutes surprises me some mornings. But whatever.

  It’s entertaining to trade insults with someone who can so easily handle it. It’s not a way I’d ever have spoken to Harper, which might be what makes it tolerable. Talking to Alicia is more how I might speak to a buddy at the bar or another worker on the ranch. I don’t have to think about it, I can just speak.

  There’s nothing I just blurted out to Harper without carefully considering if I should say it to her. I saved my swearing, roughneck side for the ranch, and my better, non-swearing demeanor for Harper, church, town, and everywhere else. But with Alicia? What the hell do I care about considering how I come across to her? She’s the interloper with me, so she can certainly handle me in my not-so-proper glory. Besides, I’m ninety percent sure she kinda appreciates it.

  A month into Alicia’s presence, I’m late getting back to the ranch. When I arrive, Ray’s taking the side-by-side out, loaded with the hauling trailer and running over to the giant cleared area where several stacks of hay sit. Most of it’s covered with large tarps and tied down to keep it free of moisture. I quickly follow to run the tractor to pull bales from the top of the hay stack and then start filling the trailer so we can haul it toward where the cows are scattered throughout the nine thousand acres covered with Ray’s free-range, grass-fed beef cattle.

  I don’t know what I’d do without this ranch. It might not be mine, but it’s more a home than my mother’s trailer had ever been. Maybe Harper and I… well, yeah, we started to have a home. I still own the house… or at least owe the payments on the loan we took. I scrape enough out of the ranch to pay it. But without Harper’s salary to offset mine, it’s damn hard to make the mortgage. And without Harper, it will never be a home.

  But other than that, this ranch has been where I spend my life. I love the space and freedom… the land around me. I enjoy the freedom of my day without working inside somewhere in front of a computer or some rote assembly line-type of job. Ray has taught me more than any other man I’ve known. He gives me a latitude that he doesn’t others, including letting me go to town to linger in Lover’s Landing. Ray is loyal to me, because I’ve given him the same.

  Toward sunset, I go to Riding Rough, cringing a bit at the name, and sit at the bar, drinking until I’m drunk. I stagger home, it’s a relatively short walk, and land on my bed where I pass out, only to be awakened way too damn early by an alarm. I sit up, scrubbing at my scruffy face. I need to shave, but maybe I’ll do it tomorrow. Foggy-eyed, I stumble upright to go take a piss outside, then I use a handful of water from the small sink in my room to rub on my face and wake myself up. It doesn’t work. I sniff my shirt. It smells like booze. Yuck. I grab a cleaner one, get it on and shove my boots on my feet, leaving on yesterday’s jeans. I haven’t slept, I’m half hung over… pretty much how I’ve spent the last year. So I’m damn used to it. Off I go toward the coffee shop… without Harper.

  Or maybe out-of-towner Alicia will be there. Maybe she’s finished her work and is gone—I expect that one of these mornings. Perhaps that’s the reason I tolerate her; she’s not going to stay. There is nothing I’ll have to tell her. Nothing I’ll owe her. She’ll be gone one day. Poof. Easy. No problem and no worries. So what if we have coffee at the same table a few times, that’s nothing in the overall scheme of my misery and, therefore, my life.

  However, I always pause to clean my boots. Harper hated dirty boots, and that was something I soon had ingrained in me. Before I met Harper or her family, I never knew to worry about dirt or mud or, worse, coming into a house or apartment or trailer and getting it on the flooring. Apparently, others cared and cleaned their floors. Not my mom. I wonder to this day if she’s ever vacuumed the single-wide she raised me in. She must have. I mean she had to at some point, but I just don’t remember it.

  So learning about such housekeeping things was a surprise when I first started dating Harper. She’d done wonders with me, and I’d had a ton to learn. She probably never realized just how much, as I was quick on the pickup. I paid constant attention to what she and her family members did and tried to copy them and learn their social behaviors, so I could mimic them. I’d gotten decent at it, until she died. Then I quit trying, and I think I’ve forgotten every social grace she or her family taught or showed me. Except, I know Betty appreciates her flooring clean, so I remember before entering there.

  I rub a hand through my hair and sigh, though I’m not sure if the sigh is glad or annoyed, surprised or hopeful… but Alicia Anderson is there. In Harper’s chair. I scowl at her. She’s watching for me, something that’s become an almost habit, and gives me a smile and wave. Even her wave is irritating. She lifts her hand, palm facing me, and flutters her fingertips. It’s so happy. Casual. Familiar. None of which I am around her or because of her.

  Why is she there waiting for me? She thinks I’m attractive. I’m aware enough of her now to notice her gleaming-eyed scans of appreciation. But, honestly, I’d looked right past her when she’d been at the next table over those first few days she started coming here. I vaguely realized a red-headed woman was sitting there staring at me.

  But did I care? Not in the least. I hadn’t yet had a woman interest me. Even for sex. But this stranger… maybe. This city lawyer who’s everything opposite of what I’ve ever known in a woman from Love or around Love. She’s so different from the love of my life… yeah, maybe there’s a spark of sexual interest. Only sex. Something that has nothing to do with feelings. Emotions. Heart or soul. All of those things I hadn’t even been aware I owned inside me, until I met Harper.

  But now? It all belongs to Harper. Forever. It’s buried with her at the small Baptist church’s cemetery outside of Love. But I still have a body, a physical presence, and it’s being stirred by the business-suited, bold and brash redhead who now waves at me. I roll my eyes but find myself giving her a small—tiny even—discrete wave back. Crap, I’m acknowledging her… like, what? We are meaning to meet here? No. Nope. There is no meaning to this. She’s sitting herself down where I want to be. Not my fault she does that and can’t take a hint.

  Betty hands me my drinks. “Good morning, Holden.” She gives me her gentle, sympatheti
c smile. One I imagine people would suspect my own mother might give me in light of the fact my wife died. But my mom didn’t really do that. She wasn’t soft and gentle, or loving and warm, not like Harper was. My mom was probably more like Alicia.

  But Betty always has the sad, sympathetic twist to her mouth and regret in her eyes. She humors my morbid routine out of pity for me. I know this. I’m not unaware of how I appear. I just don’t give a damn. There’s no one for me to impress or care what they think how I handle my life, my loss, my grief. I return the greeting and pay. Sometimes we chit chat, but this morning I do not. I turn and head toward the table, annoyed that Alicia’s presence has me automatically sitting kitty-corner of her and doing it without pause.

  I will not grow used to this woman. Not for the ten, or twenty, or once in a while, thirty minutes we might spend together. Daily. But I don’t initiate it or plan for it or look forward to it. “Good morning, Holden.”

  “You haven’t left yet?” I go for full on jackass. It’s not really an act. I’m hungover still. I’m tired. My eyes are gritty and achy, my throat dry. I miss Harper in that instant with an almost crippling pain through my gut as if something is sticking inside my stomach stabbing me.

  “Not for weeks, yet. Lots of work to do destroying your town,” she answers way too easily.

  “Weeks?” I groan.

  “Weeks.” She smiles with glee. I flop down, slumping forward with my shoulders hunched. She clears her throat after a few moments of nothing from me. “Bad morning?”

  “Bad night. Bad morning. Bad life,” I mumble, full on bringing out the pity-assed poor me.

  Silence. She taps the pen in her hand. Before her is that thick black thing of hers. It’s got papers on one side, and an iPad on the other. “Well, your city council is claiming new environmental setbacks, which are different than the ones they first told us when we started the permit process. They changed them because of us and are denying it. They’re being assholes, not applying their own rules as they wrote them.”

  I peek at her, surprised she spoke after my grumbled self-pity. I can sound pretty mean, and that was my intent. To intimidate her out of her bothering me. But she’s telling me about her problems… ones I want her to have.

  “Let me make it simple and clear. City-speak for you: They don’t want your stupid waterslides. Go away.”

  She clicks the pen more. “Yes. That’s exactly it. But we bought the land. The area was rezoned a decade ago when another developer wanted to build a hotel there. The hotel was wanted by the then mayor—”

  “Probably why he was voted out with most of that city council—” Oh damn, I engage her even though I don’t plan to. I mean to completely freeze her out, and yet she manages to draw this out of me?

  “Probably true. Considering the push back River Runs Wild is receiving from both city council and many citizens groups. For the original resort, those who tried to build here, their financing fell through… but the zoning is legal. We have the funding and legalities, and frankly, every right to build and use the land how it was zoned. Current leaders are hampering their own town.”

  “This isn’t Seattle, so no one wants to stare out at a high rise hotel and plastic spiral slides high up in the air.”

  “We aren’t monsters. We are a business.”

  “I thought it was ‘they’? Give up trying to keep it separate from you?”

  She shrugs, flopping back. “Well, hell you figured it out. There’s no point. I want this. It’s a good deal for this town, too.”

  “It’s good for you to earn a six- or seven-figure salary. Not for this town,” I grumble as I take a sip of the coffee in my annoyance. I stare down in shock at the cup in my hand when the hot liquid touches my tongue. Damn. I drank Harper’s drink. I cringe and set the drink away from me. Alicia, of course, notices. Eagle-eyed lawyer that she is.

  “Well, that’s true. But I also think it’s possible to understand that this park will bring in much needed revenue. This town is lovely. The park is on the outskirts of the main town and won’t take away anything from the ambiance. I feel like parents and grandparents of the kids who want to come to the waterslides will come to town to eat and window-shop. There will be those wanting coffee from here and desserts from the local bakery. There will be an uptick for all. It takes away nothing from Love; it only adds.”

  “I stare at it.”

  “What?” She stops her pen clicking.

  “Those of us who live around the site don’t want to stare at it. It ruins the ruralness of the area.”

  She shifts in her seat. “It’s progress.”

  “Progress. Like Seattle? Isn’t it one of the worst-congested areas in the country?”

  She purses her lips, arms folded over her chest as she leans back. I’ve finally annoyed her. “Yes,” she concedes. “It’s pretty awful.”

  “Aren’t housing prices out of proportion to wages? So normal people like me have to commute through hellishly long commutes to get to work? Yeah, all that progress sounds wonderful.”

  “Well, this isn’t even close to ever being like Seattle. Lord! Keep it in perspective. Now you sound like the city council.”

  “And you sound like an overpaid corporate hack who goes around the country destroying ways of lives that go back generations. You will get your pay and move on to rinse and repeat it elsewhere while those of us here will flounder with all the pavement that once was our land.”

  She jerks back. Harsh and rude, that’s what I am. She doesn’t respond. I glance down and see that it’s seven fifty. Enough time. I slide my chair back and all but bounce to my feet, eager to leave today. “Holden?”

  I have to pause and turn back toward her questioning tone. “You never said what made your day so lousy.”

  Harper. She’s dead and Alicia’s here. But instead I say, “Too much beer at Riding Rough.” Then I turn and walk out.

  She’s there the next day. I hold in my groan. Hadn’t my attitude been enough to snuff out her interest? It should have been. She doesn’t strike me as the type to be low on self-esteem, so why put up with me?

  She’s watching me, though doesn’t give me a wave this morning, and I note the lack of a smile from her. I grab my drinks after my usual morning hellos and pleasantries with Betty, with her soft, kind glances and already-prepared drinks. I flop down… directly across from Alicia. She straightens up, totally surprised. Yeah, I changed it up on her and sit like I would have with Harper.

  It means nothing.

  “The council didn’t drive you out of town yet?”

  “No. We’re asking for a variance.” She shakes her head. “I know you’re not really asking. You were restating your hopes. Nope. I’m so here to stay for a while. We will jump through all the hoops, and this thing will get built. It will. The permits will come through. We are in the right, this town is wrong, and it will soon host a wonderful, fun, entertaining destination for kids and families of all ages. A little something for all… just outside of Love.” She gives me a huge, fake smile.

  “Why not build this in Seattle?”

  “There’s things like it. Just not built by us.”

  “So do you plan to ruin all my mornings?”

  “Unless you tell me why you spend your mornings as you do. Perhaps that would change my mind.”

  “No.” I will not repeat a story to a stranger I don’t even say out loud to myself.

  “Then, yes. I’ll be here.”

  “Why? You find cowboys who don’t want to talk to you interesting somehow?”

  “No. I just think… perhaps you might need the change in routine.”

  Change in routine? I wonder what she thinks I do here. But I guess I don’t really care what she thinks of me. She’s here because she finds me a novelty. And she’s attracted to me. What else could it be?

  I sigh, still hunched forward. “What is you want from me? To fuck?”

  Her intake of breath is sharp. I glance up, surprised to find her eyes widening and mo
uth puckering… crap, she’s pissed. Offended? I didn’t think for a second that would offend her, but then there’s a flash of… what is that in her eyes? Hurt?

  I shift in my seat. Maybe it was crass. Maybe uncalled for. But I just can’t do the mental gymnastics of flirting. Of male-female games. Of getting to the point of it all… sex. I can’t face it, so I thought at least this would end it. I don’t see why we should continue with this pretending to have interest in mundane interactions when the only end game with me and her… is fucking. So she can play shocked and offended, but she had started after me, quite blatantly. My behavior about this table and coffees is crazy-ass, even to those who know my story. She doesn’t know the story and still sits here? Still pursues my crazy? What else is it? She might be embarrassed and annoyed with what I said, but if she were being honest, she’d admit it. Grow up. Claim it. Because that’s all I’m offering.

  “Coffee. Company.”

  I grunt. “Bullshit. No one would want that with me. I’m not good company. I try not to be.”

  She clears her throat. “Well, double yes to that. You do a good job of it, too.”

  “Yet, here you are. I’m no college-educated businessman like you’re used to, so you can’t tell me you come to me for stimulating conversation. You started sitting here because I had grubby clothes on with cowboy boots that you fantasize about. Right? So, do you want to fuck?”

  “No. You’re not like I’m used to. I sat here because…” she hesitates.

  “What?”

  “I thought… I thought you were ill.”

  Shocked out of my apathy I lift my gaze to her. “What?”

  “Well, not like flu-ill or cancer-ill, but you had some kind of obsessive-compulsive behavior with the coffee and this table. I thought if I interrupted it, it might change things up for you.” She licks her lips. For the first time she fidgets, pushing her hair behind her ear and giving me a tentative smile. “I thought you needed help. But now?”